The photograph is a mural-sized print of Mexico City’s Polytechnic Institute Complex (1964). Reproduced from a period publication, this black and white photograph freezes these buildings in the year of their construction. The image captures a sense of functional clarity in the buildings portrayed. The stacked class-rooms of the Mexico City Polytechnic, raised on pilotis, stand in rows like display cases in a museum, their functional system of support and slab exposed to the viewer like the contents of a vitrine. Functionalism has been shown as an outdoor installation in Mexico City and Havana and as an indoor work in Boston and Los Angeles.
Documentation: Installation at Pabellón Cuba, Havana; installation at UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Functionalism (Havana)
Terence Gower, 2003
Digital print on vinyl
275 x 366 cm
Functionalism (ICA/Hammer)
Digital print on three Masonite panels, 213 x 366 cm overall
Vinyl on glass, 2 sheets, 120 x 90 cm each
Project Text: Functionalism (Havana)
Project Text: Funcionalismo (Mexico)
